Be Ready for Any School Emergency with Raptor Technologies

In this interview, Raptor Chief Product Officer Chris Noell tells Campus Safety about Raptor Technologies’ latest product offerings and their overall value proposition for schools and school districts.

Campus Safety: What is/are the top emergency notification and/or panic alarm/mobile duress system or app from your company, and what makes it special? How does it apply to school security, public safety and/or emergency management?

Chris Noell: Raptor is 100% focused on supporting PK-12 schools, so our Raptor Emergency Management system is tailored to their unique needs, giving schools the power to prepare for, respond to and recover from any emergency. Raptor’s advanced emergency technology helps schools schedule and manage drills, instantly notify first responders, use secure in-app two-way chat for real-time communications, accurately account for individuals, and safely reunify families.

Raptor Alert, part of the Raptor Emergency Management system, gives all staff members the power to expedite help through contextual alerts. Working on any internet-enabled device, it provides a silent panic alert system (compliant with Alyssa’s Law) that instantly notifies first responders at the touch of a button. It is compatible with all standard Public Safety Answering Points and emergency calling infrastructure and is RapidSOS Ready™, which accelerates the transfer of critical emergency alert data to 911 and first responders.

We have also recently introduced Raptor Badge Alert as the latest addition to our school alerting technology. Raptor Badge Alert empowers staff to discreetly and instantly activate alerts via a wearable badge utilizing the latest LoRa technology. Together with the Raptor Alert app, Raptor Badge Alert enhances rapid, campus-wide emergency response with single-action alerting on our end-to-end emergency management platform. With these flexible alerting options and real-time communication capabilities, schools can respond swiftly and effectively to any situation, reducing complexity and enhancing their overall safety.

CS: What other products or offerings would you like to highlight, and what are some of their qualities and benefits?

Noell: I’d like to go a bit deeper into how Raptor Badge Alert works. With a simple push of a button, staff can instantly alert administrators, first responders, and campus security, ensuring a rapid response in emergencies or everyday incidents. As part of the Emergency Management system, it provides seamless communication across multiple channels, including push notifications, strobe lights, intercoms, and digital signage. The badge operates on a reliable LoRa network, ensuring coverage throughout the entire campus, even in areas with limited Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity.

Additionally, Raptor Badge Alert offers floor-level location data displayed on a map that provides situational awareness to responders to allocate resources more effectively. This multi-layered system combines the ease of wearable technology with the power of integrated software, streamlining emergency protocols and ensuring that schools can quickly respond to any type of emergency. Feedback from our customers is that Raptor Alert and Raptor Badge Alert are essential tools for proactive, efficient campus safety management.

CS: How do your company and its offerings address the needs of schools?

Noell: The Raptor Portfolio is built upon an integrated platform and contains four pillars: Emergency Management, Campus Movement, Student Wellbeing and Staff Adoption and Performance. Together this provides the support for a foundation of safety and wellbeing.

We focus on the unique needs of schools, with more than 20 years of experience, today working with 60,000 schools and counting. Having an integrated platform enables a seamless user experience and data sharing across the district. It helps districts consolidate their safety and wellbeing technology, helping them to maximize their budget, simplify IT management and drive staff adoption.

We pride ourselves on having an unwavering commitment to our customers’ success, offering a variety of training options to ensure adoption, customer-guided ongoing product configuration, and an established high-touch Compliance and Success Program to drive additional value. We stay on top of ever-evolving federal and state mandates to reduce a district’s liability, provide accurate and complete reporting, and ongoing training to help ensure governance.

CS: What else is new or noteworthy about your company for 2025?

Noell: We recently announced the acquisition of SmartPass, a market-leading digital hall pass system. This strategic acquisition expands the reach of our holistic safety suite by now being able to offer safe, efficient student movement management. SmartPass, already trusted by thousands of schools across the country, has revolutionized how schools track and manage student movement by promoting accountability and reducing disruptions.

We’re excited for the future integration of SmartPass with Raptor’s product portfolio, which will allow us to identify and account for students who are out of the classroom during an emergency. We feel confident that Raptor continues to provide the most comprehensive unified platform for schools to manage daily operations and safety more effectively.

CS: What is your company’s overall value proposition to schools? Why should they do business with you?

Noell: Raptor builds on more than 20 years of exclusive PK-12 expertise, supporting over 40% of our nation’s schools, including 55 of the top 100 districts, in fostering a safer path to learning and driving district performance.

We have learned that the best performing districts are built on a foundation of safety and wellbeing and don’t look at safety as just one department or a check-box compliance issue. A safe culture of wellbeing impacts multiple dimensions of the school environment, including academic scores, attendance rates, enrollment rates, graduation rates, teacher satisfaction, compliance integrity and community engagement. By amplifying the impact of their people, processes and technology, our customers are building a strong foundation of safety and wellbeing, ensuring their districts are a safe haven for student learning and success.

We call this concept the Impact Multiplier. We help districts across the country gain an Impact Multiplier and strengthen their foundation of safety and wellbeing across our integrated platform. Raptor allows school districts to improve their safety visibility, accountability and compliance, all of which has a lasting impact on students, staff, district leaders, parents and the surrounding community.

CS: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Noell: I touched on it a bit earlier, but I want to emphasize that through our Raptor Connect integration platform, we offer native, bi-directional integration with a school’s existing digital security systems, maps, and peripherals. This means you can activate an emergency response from a single point instead of activating separate systems.

For example, initiating a response protocol such as a lockdown within the Raptor Alert app can automatically activate your school’s existing mass notification systems (devices such as sirens, flashing lights, digital signage, etc.), while also displaying an integrated map of the campus with alert information, including the initiator’s location.

Similarly, a school’s gun detection software can automatically activate Raptor Alert to initiate the designated response protocol. By leveraging integrations with existing school safety systems, Raptor improves safety without requiring massive investments in new equipment, all while streamlining a school’s digital emergency response activations, speeding notifications, and minimizing the impact of the situation.

For any schools looking to learn more, check out our website for additional resources and to request a demo. We’d love to partner with you are on a safer path to learning.